Tag: Ian Farr

200! It only seems like yesterday that I was celebrating 100 posts. Fugit inreparabile tempus! When I started blogging as PoSh Chap, I set myself the goal of producing a blog post each week. At times, it has been a tough target: there is such a thing as writer’s block and also such things…

A digital signature is created when a file is run through a hashing algorithm and the resultant hash (digest / fingerprint) is then signed by a private key. If an application wants to check the integrity of a file, it can perform the following steps: Decrypt the signed hash with the corresponding public key Put…

When I was a Systems Administrator, it was often tough to find time to be proactive and housekeep. However, this is a key part of the role. What I used to do is dedicate time each week to expanding my arsenal of scripts. These little beauties performed the many mundane, but necessary, Active Directory housekeeping…

In June I posted about searching Active Directory for principals that have the “Write Members” permission on a Distribution List. I had a follow-up question, from an internal source, about deciphering each Access Control Entry (ACE) returned by Get-Acl against the Active Directory PS drive. I thought I’d convey the same information to the outside…

I was delivering some Azure training recently. I went to the shell icon in the Azure portal (see here for more information) and I started to explain how disappointed I still am with the PowerShell functionality being marked as ‘coming soon’… then, to maximum excitement and amazement, PowerShell was blissfully available! How many…

I’ve lost count of just how many blog posts have their origin in a customer question. Here’s another: “How do you use PowerShell to get a list of what attributes *could* be populated on an AD user object?” A magnificent question! The customer was unsure as to why some properties would appear…

A little while back I noticed a new (but familiar) icon in the Azure portal (see below, not above)… I was gutted to see the following for PowerShell… coming soon! Good things come to those who wait, but if you can’t wait you can sign up to a Private Preview by following…

You’re running a cmdlet in the PowerShell.exe host console. You want to see what parameters are available to you. You can tab through them, after inputting a hyphen, until you get the one you want… but, how do you display them all and then chose the one you want, avoiding the help file? Enter …

Imagine you want a secondary parameter (or set of parameters) to ONLY appear if a particular value has been supplied to an initial parameter… Eh? Ok, so you have Parameter A. You supply Value A to Parameter A and you now, and only now, have access to Parameter B. Furthermore, if you were to supply…

I’m aware that I write for an international audience and I try to use international English in my posts. When I use traditional or colloquial English I usually have a good reason for doing so. Today’s reason is because I like the alliteration that ‘Filter Faffing’ provides. faffing – the act of making…